Phases
When preparing, setting up and running a customer managed tenant, Unique identifies three main phases. Learn below about each phases details.
Disclaimers
Phase Key Bullets
For simplicity, each phase has a backpack: each phase is accompanied by a list of bullet points that capture the essential insights. While these points are not exhaustive, they provide a quick snapshot to summarize what occurs in each phase.
Dependencies
Each phase depends on results of the previous phase even when unlisted under pre-requisites explicitly.
Hardware cost
All Azure costs are directly paid by the customer as all resources run in their tenant / Microsoft Customer Agreement / Enterprise enrollment.
Timeline
The timelines referenced in this page heavily depend on the following:
the availability of full time employees on the clients side in order to support the endeavour (at least 60% suitable FTE are required to drive an ambitious timeline)
the availability of Unique employees
the availability, support and agreement of central teams of the client, named examples could be
IT Security
IT Architecture or Engineering
Financial Operations
Compliance or Legal
All estimations are non-binding, and the effort is highly dependent on security requirements, processes, and permissions of the client. The overall duration for the setup of the CMT with the standard model should be min. 3-6 months to ensure all permissions can be granted and the setup is compliant and governed.
Some estimations for times or phases can be found in boxes like these
RULE OF THUMB TIMELINE
Β
- 1 Disclaimers
- 1.1 Phase Key Bullets
- 1.2 Dependencies
- 1.3 Hardware cost
- 1.4 Timeline
- 2 Overview
- 2.1 Standard model
- 2.2 Variant(s)
- 3 PREPARE
- 4 SET UP
- 4.1 Out of scope
- 4.2 Prerequisites
- 4.3 Client Activities
- 4.4 Unique Activities
- 5 RUN
- 5.1 Out Of Scope
- 5.2 Prerequisites
- 5.3 Client Activities
- 5.4 Unique Activities
Β
Overview
Standard model
Unique has a standard model to run Customer Managed Tenants including the following principles:
Unique regularly releases new bundles (see Release Process).
Unique has no access to the customers environment and thus cannot directly see the running resources and workloads.
The customer/client sets up and runs the product themselves potentially with advisory/consulting.
The customer educates and maintains a 1st Level Application Support which can contact or escalate incidents to Unique Enterprise Support.
Uniques 2nd or 3rd level support might request logs, telemetry, further insights or screen-sharing sessions to investigate the issues.
This model has crystallised out with multiple FSI clients and is thus the most compliant and recommended way. Clients may opt for Variants as described below.
RULE OF THUMB TIMELINE
The standard model, when ALL the pre-installation steps are fulfilled has been shown to be ready to test on the clients tenant after ~3 months.
Production ready setups take often more than 6 months due to the dependency on security requirements, processes, and permissions of the client.
Variant(s)
If the standard, recommended scheme above is not chosen, there exist many variants that can only be determined when spending multiple iterations with the client determining the responsibilities.
Since the variants raise the complexity excessively, its deviations are maintained in Deviations from the Common Model.
The phases below are valid in regard to the Standard Model.
PREPARE
Client Activities
Prepares Azure tenant according to the https://unique-ch.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PUB/pages/515833884.
Might already provision all Azure Entra and ARM resources required to accommodate Unique either with the provided bundle or by other means.
Unique Activities
Initially provides a Release Process bundle which contains
terraform
code that can provision all needed resources to accommodate Unique.Advise the client where desired or needed (on a daily rate) including the following:
Advisory for the prerequisites.
Advisory on the deployment of the Unique landing zone content.
SET UP
Out of scope
Client-specific customisations and enhancements for the whole bundle (e.g. private API Gateway compatibility or change to the AI model usage etc.).
If any customizations/enhancements are needed it will be charged additionally and has an impact on the timeline. Findings for this should have been already made in the PREPARE phase using the https://unique-ch.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PUB/pages/515833884.
Prerequisites
Fulfilled, checked or mitigated https://unique-ch.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PUB/pages/515833884 and potentially already first resources provisioned.
Client Activities
Client installs bundle
Azure Resources (overlaps fluently with Prepares last step, some resources might have been provisioned to PoC the setup)
Supporting Services and their configuration (
helm
charts andhelmfile
s)Unique product and its configuration
Unique Activities
Naturally provides a newerRelease Process bundle as some time might have passed since the PREPARE
Advisory on the deployment of Unique Product and support services.
Consulting for the just installed supporting services.
Consulting for SSO configurations.
Consulting for the Unique Product and its first setup (including assistants or other features).
RUN
Out Of Scope
If Unique has no access to the environment, investigations on the tenant itself by Unique employees are inherently impossible and the client must provide logs, telemetry or requested screenshots or screen sharings to help resolve an issue. The client must reserve capacity internally for this maybe as part of the 1st Level (Application) Support.
Unique commits to resolving bugs within the Unique product. Configuration bugs as in βthe reference architecture was wrongβ are taken into account and ported into the documentation but wonβt be actively fixed by Unique. This is a customer managed tenant so the client in the end manages the infrastructure. Unique can advise at a rate and in that case co-learn for future Reference Architecture.
Unique only provides bug fixes in the latest Unique version or the newest bundles respectively. Hotfixes are not supported as they are not needed. If Unique and clients stick to a proper staged rollout process,
DEV
and/orQA
systems must find breaking bugs before large user bases are affected. In case a breaking bug was introduced, the client must roll back the last release and wait for the next release that contains a fix.
Unique on the other hand, if such a case of occurs of course highly prioritises to fix such an issue in the next release!
Prerequisites
Completed SET UP phase.
Client Activities
Installs provided bundle regularly.
Unique can and will not force the client to update in a Unique-dictated rythm.
But Unique only fixes application bugs in the latest releases version (see Out Of Scope).
Triages incidents internally with 1st Level Support that was built up in SET UP.
Provides all necessary insights to Unique as far as applicable to investigate issues.
Unique Activities
Provides new bundles as defined in Release Process.
Triages and investigates support tickets handed in by client.
Provides fixes for bugs.
Advises on configuration mistakes of resources or workloads at a rate.
Β
Author | See Parent |
---|
Β© 2024 Unique AG. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy β Terms of Service